


Leviathan at the Hellmouth

by lye_tea



Category: Stoker (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 14:13:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lye_tea/pseuds/lye_tea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In absolution, they will be free. Charlie/India</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A rather obvious (cliched) AU in which India does not kill Charlie. Instead, they travel the world and continue their killing-spree. Inspired by "what would happen if Heidegger wrote _Lolita_."

**1.**

" _the war of all against all"_

The world is a pollution.

_Squirming._

He hears it—them—calling. Sharp, shrill and raspy, the sibilance of serpents rising. They wake. They scream. Clever, little claws and poisoned teeth. They devour him whole.

He giggles (it tickles). He is mad (frazzled).

And this here  _is the sweet, bitter-dry, faceless end_.

He careens hell-bent into an explosion. And thinks:

Someday, the world will end. Someday, he will expunge it of disease, of rot, of joyless laughs and fitting betrayals. Promises. Half-broken, yet-unformed. All of it, gone.

The world begs to be killed.

One by one, he will oblige.

\--

These are the rules for utopia—  
(whistling, he imagines a place of beauty, of wonder)  
—utopia does not lie.

He coughs, resists the sudden inundation of tears.  _Crybaby, mockity mock._ Instead, swift and elegant, he decapitates the man. And immediately, the voice stops.

Good.

Hey, good job kid. Real good work.

_You're doing well. Real well._

\--

India's face full of despair. She is bloodied and bruised. He watches, silent and cautious—it's pointless. This one will be dead soon. And there will be no fun for him (not this time around).

 


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

In a week, they are gone. Vanished: a disappearing act down the twilight mist.

Holding tight onto her small bag, India waits for her uncle to finish. He is meticulous in his morning toilette (as he is with everything else). Shaving, she has come to learn, is an art. An opera with resonating trills, a Bouguereau rubbed to a millimeter of varnish. Uncle Charlie cannot be hurried.

"It's the small things in life, India," he calls from the bathroom. "We must enjoy them while we can."

"Where are we going next?"

He peeks out the door and grins. "Now, that's a surprise.

\--

By the third week, she is almost, nearly, entirely certain that the police have surrendered their sweetened war.

"Told you so."

For a second, India wants to carve that smug, little smirk clean off his face. But instead, she nods and cracks the window open, inhaling the hot air of Georgian highways. North, he said. They will stop at New York. There's something he wants to show her.

 _Yes, Uncle Charlie_.

\--

In Virginia, they ditch the car. It's too conspicuous, too bogged down in the tires and muck and dreck. And so, he picks up a nice and swift BMW. Small, blue. He thinks it to her liking – like every mid and upper-class American.

Normal. Right, that.

Even angels sometimes must pretend. And they, they are in it for the fun. For the hell of it, to hell with it.

\--

_Your mother is dead._

_That's okay, never liked her much._

"What are we doing in New York?"

"I told you. There's something I need to show you."

"What is it?"

"A corpse."

_So, how about that dad of yours?_

\--

There's a Hitchcock festival playing. He's never been much of a fan, but at the very least, it'll be something to do. She reluctantly agrees because it'll make him happy. Like a little boy, he's so easy to appease.

\--

She knows he cries at night.

(He knows not.)

She can smell the stench of tears – the lucid, reticent, dissilient lust of fear. Each drop, each vapid, hurting haunt crashes down on her. His whimpers howl, breaking the stolen night. The saltiness, sick and hoarse, seeps into the cheap hotel sheets. Soap and bleach and streaks on floral seas.

She feigns sleep.

Charlie is five feet away, belly curled like a perverted arc – half-formed midget – and sniveling loud enough to wake the dead. He is spineless (will be gutless). And she hates him. She despises him. She wants him gone.

But first, he must suffer.

\--

She doesn't ask him where he keeps getting the money. They are never in need (seems to be an infinite, self-replenishing cache). And he doesn't bother addressing an answer accidentally: Alas! All Are Askew!

He irritates her; she pisses him off.

Piss off, India. Hey, I mean it. Goddamnit, for once can you just shut up? Aren't I supposed to be the adult here?

"You missed the turn. I told you. Take a left turn. You took a right."

Yawning, she folds up the map and stretches her legs over the dashboard. Charlie grins and strokes her shin, ghosting little aches and shivers up her skin.

"We'll be there soon. Think of it as taking the scenic route."

\--

He's itching to kill. She detects the telltale signs. The fidgeting, the garbled gasps, the mad-dashed, half-attempted suppressions.

Temptation is poison at its most potent. It penetrates deeper than anything else.

And so, she indulges him. It's okay,  _shhh_. We'll do it tonight.

Grinning, he turns to her and stares back with large, vapid eyes. Breathless, she places a hand on his shoulder. Unsteady, jerky.

She's the one shaking.

 


End file.
